WASHINGTON — Oklahoma Farm Bureau President Mike Spradling, making his annual trek to Capitol Hill this week, said Monday he is concerned about Congress' reluctance to tackle long-term farm policy and President Barack Obama's proposal to slash farm subsidies.

Spradling said Congress' foot-dragging has already meant that reductions to farm programs will be deeper than they would have been last year, since the budget baseline has been lowered.

“The longer we go, the less money we'll have to work with,” said Spradling, a pecan farmer and cattle rancher from Tulsa County who has been president of the Oklahoma group since 2007.

Spradling has a natural — and powerful — ally on Capitol Hill in Rep. Frank Lucas, the Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Lucas, of Cheyenne, got a long-term farm bill through his committee last year, but GOP leaders wouldn't bring it up for a vote.

That legislation drew opposition from some Democrats because of cuts to food stamps — the largest part of the farm bill — and from Republicans who object to government intervention in agricultural markets.

Congress passed a one-year extension of the 2008 farm bill, and Spradling said Monday that it's possible the same thing will happen again this year.

Proposed budget

In the budget he released last week, the president targeted direct payments and crop insurance subsidies to save billions of dollars. Direct payments, which some landowners receive whether or not they plant a crop in a given year, have long been criticized as wasteful, and the House and Senate farm bills written last year would have eliminated them.

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Chris Casteel began working for The Oklahoman's Norman bureau in 1982 while a student at the University of Oklahoma. After covering the police beat, federal courts and the state Legislature in Oklahoma City, he moved to Washington in 1990, where...